Dutch Ovens

Owen Mahan

The Dutch oven is, to me, the most versatile piece of kitchenware for the home cook. It is sturdy, large, capable of achieving any culinary task, from quickly searing a steak to simmering a stew for hours. Although heavy, its handles make it easy to carry between the stove, oven, and countertop. The colorful Dutch ovens of today, from brands like Le Creuset, became popular in the 1980s, but the pan has a long history behind it.

Although the Dutch oven has the Netherlands as its namesake, it was actually invented in Britain in the early 18th century. Abraham Darby, an employee of an English brassworking company, made cookware out of brass, an alloy of tin and copper. These metals are relatively expensive, so Darby looked to steel  —an alloy of cheap carbon and iron— as a substitute. Together with a Welshman named James Thomas, he created a process for casting steel into the shape of a pot modeled after similar processes present in the Netherlands, hence the name Dutch oven. The core of all Dutch ovens is this cast iron, the same as a typical cast iron skillet. Casting refers to the process of melting iron and pouring it into a mold in the desired shape, as opposed to forging, where the iron is softened and pressed rather than poured. These Dutch ovens that Darby produced look relatively similar to the Dutch ovens of today, but the term referred to a wide range of deep cast iron pans. These pots were highly useful because they could be put directly onto the coals, or even covered in them.

In America, Dutch ovens became a quintessential piece of cookware. They underwent some modifications that took them further from what we think of as a Dutch oven and closer to a cauldron. Structurally, legs to keep the pot off of the direct coals and a larger lip around the rim of the lid became common. This lip is apocryphally attributed as an innovation of Paul Revere. This style of Dutch oven was popular especially on the frontier due to its reliability, and became widely photographed due its use in late 19th and early 20th century cattle drives, where cattle farmers would drive their animals towards railroads to feed the growing cattle industry, especially in Chicago. Although these pure cast iron cauldron-like Dutch ovens still exist, as the 20th century progressed, they fell out of use in the US as lighter cookware was popularized after the world wars.

Meanwhile, in Europe, the style of Dutch oven we know today came into being. A series of innovations from Thomas and Charles Clark of England, the BK company of the Netherlands, and Le Creuset of France revolutionized the pot over the 19th and 20th centuries. Rather than a pot entirely made of cast iron, they created “enameled” pots, which would become hugely popular in the US in the 1980s and are still, in my opinion, the best pots out there today.

Enameled cast iron is the secret of the modern Dutch oven. Although they often have brightly colored exteriors and white cooking surfaces, that original cast iron core is still within the pot, providing all of the benefits of cast iron with the stylish element of the enamel coat. When searing a piece of meat, we preheat the pan in order to quickly heat the exterior of the meat to far above boiling temperatures in order to allow for browning to occur. In a thin pan, adding cold meat will decrease the temperature of the pan quickly, ruining our preheating efforts. In a cast iron pot, like a Dutch oven, there is so much heat energy held within the bottom of the pot that the temperature will barely drop. Cast iron is also highly durable, so it is oven safe, will last generations, and can withstand heat as high as that required for baking bread.As induction cooktops, which use electromagnetic energy to heat, continue to become more popular, the cast iron core of Dutch ovens will allow them to keep pace. Ceramic cookware, for instance, is not magnetic, so will not be heated by induction, unlike the core of our Dutch ovens.

What sets Dutch ovens apart from a normal cast iron skillet are a combination of versatile shape and the enameling part of “enameled cast iron” that adds convenience. First off, the handles of a Dutch oven are very convenient. Cast iron is heavy, so two handles to evenly distribute the weight, as opposed to one large handle like a traditional pan, makes pot much less cumbersome. Additionally, depth and a lid make the Dutch oven an ideal pan for soups and stews of any sort. Enameling, the innovation of the modern Dutch oven, helps deal with some of cast iron’s typical faults. The colorful coating of a Dutch oven comes from a layer of melted porcelain or glass which essentially seals the cast iron core. Iron is a reactive metal, meaning atoms of iron on our cookware will readily interact with molecules in the air or in our food. This leads to rusting, making cast iron relatively difficult to clean and store, and leeching a metal into acidic foods. The enamel seal of a Dutch oven makes it much easier to clean, prevents rusting, and allows any acidic food – a tomato sauce, for instance – to be simmered for hours with no metallic taste.

For the home cook, this means dutch ovens can be used for a wide variety of dishes. Many dishes involve seared and braised meat, and this can lead to a multi-pan mess. With a Dutch oven, we can do everything in one pan, which is both easy to clean up and prevents loss of the delicious brown fond that clings to the bottom of the pan. Examples include chicken and dumpling soup, ossobuco, beef bourguignon, braised chicken thighs, and pho. Your run of the mill soups, like potato leek soup, also are easy in a Dutch oven. Desserts, too, like poached fruit and sticky rice, can also be made. I consider the Dutch oven to be a foundational piece of cookware, and an essential item for any home cook. For those putting together their first post-grad kitchen, the Dutch oven will be your new best friend for any culinary endeavors.

The perfect stew in my Dutch oven